The present invention concerns an arrangement for providing weft thread for a continuous oscillating weft thread magazine of a warp knitting machine. The machine works with a creel and with a delivery means, which delivers the weft thread with constant delivery speed. This machine can include a carriage with thread guides that take the thread from a take-off point at a take-off speed corresponding to its respective position from one carrier chain of the magazine to the other and back again. The invention also relates to a storage arrangement upstream of the take-off point for compensating for the difference between the constant delivery speed and the variable take-off speed. The apparatus can work with working elastic weft threads.
A weft thread provision arrangement of this general type is known in the expander creel for the weft lock machine (type ExWe), manufactured by Liba. The spools in the creel carry elastic weft threads and are friction driven circumferentially. The delivery means forwards these threads at the means consumption speed. The delivery point which is formed by a reversing roller, is located above and approximately in the middle of the travel path of the carriage. The back and forth movement of the carriage, the sinusoidal speed and the delay time at the path ends to lay the threads about the hooks of the carrier chains, lead to a thread consumption varying considerably with time and thus, to a variable take-off speed at the take-off point. The storage arrangement to neutralize the difference between the constant delivery speed and the variable take-off speed comprises a cam controlled lever with two reversing idlers displaced in the direction of the axis of the levers, which work with three location fixed reversing idlers. The storage arrangement takes up thread material during the movement of the carriage from one carrier chain up to the midpoint and redelivers this during the second half of the travel of the carriage.
The problem posed for solution by the invention lies therein that there be provided a weft thread provision arrangement of the forgoing type wherein it is possible to deliver weft threads with constant tension values, in particular tension-free or substantially untensioned to the reversing weft thread magazine, which property is particularly valuable for elastic weft threads.